Trump: I'm investigating how a 'bad student' like Obama got into Harvard

April 25, 2011|By Luke Broadwater

Apparently, one pretend investigation (into Obama's birth certificate) isn't enough for Donald Trump. He now claims he is "looking into" how President Barack Obama was accepted to Ivy League schools Columbia and Harvard despite being a "terrible" student.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible," Trump said today in an interview with The Associated Press. "How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Trump has never been shy about talking about his academic record. He went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

"I always tell people, I was a very good student," he's fond of saying. "I went to the best college. I went to great schools. I have very high aptitude."

In speaking of Obama, Trump is apparently referring to Obama's book "Dreams from My Father," in which the president recalled a time in his life -- his senior year in high school -- when he started to drift away from the path of success.

"I had learned not to care," Obama wrote. "... Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it."

But his mother confronted him about his behavior.

"Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?" she asked him, according to the book. "... One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven't even started on your college applications."

However, the chapter goes on to note that Obama wasn't close to "flunking out" and his mother assured him, if he refocused, he could "get into any school in the country" if he just "put in a little effort."